Books

This blog has been leaning heavily towards the Bookish side lately and that’s purely because I really hadn’t been doing much crafty stuff. Between Christmas, being ill for the first two weeks of the year and stuffing as much writing time in as possible I just haven’t been crafting. That is changing though and I’ll mention it more over the next couple of weeks.

The only real crafty things I’ve been doing so far this year have been cross stitch (which you’ll get an update on this weekend) and making my card orders for my etsy shop. The only new card I have to show you is this valentines day one.

Which you can buy here (shameless self promo). I say valentines day card but I mean you could use it for anything, maybe mothers day coming up to?

But anyway, in all this non crafty time I have still been buying books. Obviously. Even though I’ve only been reading arcs and free books on my kindle unlimited trial. Which means the books on my kindle are growing at an alarming rate. I am going on holiday at the end of next month though so at least I’ll have enough books for that!

Literally every single one of these ebooks were on sale (okay no, Truthwitch was free from the Tor newsletter) and when a book on my tbr goes on sale I just can’t resist.

So onto the book haul; (As always, where I’ve used a blurb, it’s from goodreads) Continue reading →

Another Bookish month has passed for me to tell you about! Has anyone gotten used to writing 2018 yet? I’m still getting it wrong.

I’m still right smack bang in the middle of my kindle unlimited 3 month trial which means the only books I’ve read this month (and will be reading next month) are either from KU or that I’ve been given to review from netgalley. Now that means all of these were books I didn’t pay to read, which is great because that means I’m not buying books, right? That is oh so wrong. Just because I’m only reading free book has not stopped me from buying books. My TBR on my kindle is growing to terrifying proportions. (I have bought ten books since the trial started and I haven’t read any of them) But that is an issue that I am completely ignoring for another month until my trial runs out.

For now, I’ll talking about this month. I had a massive reading slump at the start of January, this may have had quite a lot to do with the fact I was sick for the first two weeks of the year (happy new year me) and the added pressure of already being behind on my reading challenge midway through the first month of the year also didn’t help. But! Things improved. Phew.

It’s January. A whole new year which means a whole new years worth of new books to look forward too. I’ve been building up a goodreads shelf of 2018 releases that I’m most looking forward to and I thought it would be an excellent idea to do a blog post of my favourite ones. And quite a few of these are debuts which I’ll mention next to each book. So here it is. A top ten list (by month of release not order) of the books I am most excited about being released this year (plus quite a few honourable mentions because there as so many amazing ones coming out) But if you want to see more then you can check out my goodreads shelf HERE.

Bur for now, my top ten….

All links go to their respective Goodreads pages so you can also add them and the pub dates are from goodreads too. Some of them don’t have covers yet and others I’m not sure if they will be the final covers.Continue reading →

The title is pretty self explanatory, no? Here is a list of the ten best books I read last year and also a little info about my reading year in general.

Read: 64

DNF: 7? I think (I really should keep better track of which books I’ve DNF’d but I don’t count then in my reading count)

About a third of the books I’ve read this year have been eARCs from netgalley (ARC = Advanced Reader Copy) and I’m so happy because books are so expensive! I’ve written reviews for every book I’ve read this year and regardless of whether I got them as arcs or not all my opinions are honest and my own. Quite a few gave made it onto my top ten but then I’ve just been really lucky to read some amazing ones this year.

So in no particular order, here are my top ten with really rubbish attempts at one line explanations.

The year’s over! Ahhhh. Time to look back through all the books I’ve read this year. I’m doing the book survey which was made by Jamie over on this blog here. It’s a really fun tag, where you get to see the good, the bad and everything in between of what I read this year. I’ve edited it slightly, taken out a few questions that really don’t apply to me and merged some where the answer would be the same. It’s a long enough post even with those changes but I hope you’ll stick around to see what I thought.

*All these questions relate to books that I have read in 2017

Reading stats:

Books read: 64

Rereads: 3

Dnfs: 7? (Not counted in books read)

Most read genre: Fantasy

1. Best book you read in 2017?

The Foxhole Court, The Raven King, The Kings Men. All For The Game Trilogy by Nora Sakavic.

Without a doubt this series was the best thing I read in 2017 and yes, I know it said book, but I’m going with the whole trilogy, I read it in a week and then reread it the next week. I’ll try not to say this for every single answer from here in. Continue reading →

The last monthly book wrap up of the year! This year has gone so quickly it’s unbelievable. I’ll be doing a 2017 book survey and a best books of the year post over the coming week or two which I’m looking forward to. But for now lets look back to this month.

Right at the end of November I saw an advert for a 3 months free trial of amazons kindle unlimited. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a lending library where you can read as many books from their kindle unlimited catalogue for, usually, £7.99 a month. The catch is that most of the big sellers and hyped books are not on there, in fact having gone through the hundreds of books on my tbr, I only found 7 on kindle unlimited. But the opportunity to read those 7 books for free (and probably more because 3 of them are series that are all on there) was too good to pass up.

That means that most of the books I read this month were from there. It also means I’ll be concentrating on reading those for the next two months rather than anything else that comes my way (other than earcs from netgalley). It hopefully means I won’t be spending any money on books over the next couple of months….. Okay, scrap that because I’ve already bought two in a sale and I’ll probably buy more if they go on sale after Christmas.

Top Ten Tuesdays is a book tag hosted over at The Broke and The Bookish. They set a theme every Tuesday for people to answer, their theme this week is Top Ten Books I Hope that Santa Brings but I have just signed up for a 3 month free trial of kindle unlimited and I mean free books! So I’m going to try not to spend money on any books this Christmas (here’s hoping) which means Santa brings me zero this year so here is my adaptation on this topic

Top Ten books free on kindle unlimited because Santa won’t be bringing me any

It’s catchy, right?

First off about half of these were already on my TBR. (I went through all 280 books and found, I think, 7 on kindle unlimited), the others were books I’d either heard about and thought I’d give a try or came up in my recommended and sounded good. So here they are: Continue reading →